


To the Man I Love Before

by gottalovethesun



Category: Vampire Academy Series - Richelle Mead
Genre: Break Up, Champagne Problems, F/M, One Shot, basically just how i imagine their relationship to have gone, letter format, taylor swift prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:41:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29822316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gottalovethesun/pseuds/gottalovethesun
Summary: Rose is writing to her first love Dimitri who was her Russian tutor at her boarding school St. Vlads in Russia. Everyone is human in this story. One shot.
Relationships: Dimitri Belikov/Rose Hathaway, Rose Hathaway/Adrian Ivashkov
Kudos: 2





	To the Man I Love Before

**Author's Note:**

> A letter from Rose to her first love Dimitri Belikov. Heartbreak. All Human. One shot. 
> 
> Hello lovely reader! I hope you enjoy this little letter format of a story that came to me after listening to way too much Taylor Swift. There were so many Taylor Swift song names I could have used but none of them felt right. I wrote this on a whim and decided to upload it because why not! I only write for fun anyway; I might as well share it.   
> Originally posted on ff.net

Dimitri Belikov  
Nauki Pr., bld. 47/39, appt. 3  
Baia  
Siberia

Dimitri, 

I know this letter is probably a surprise to you, it’s been a long, long time since we spoke to each other. I’m not even sure how you’ll react to this letter, maybe you’re angry and will just throw it away as soon as you get it, maybe you won’t even receive it and these words will be lost in the mail forever more. That might be blessing in disguise. 

If you have decided to continue this, I pray that you read till the end before deciding what to do with these words. Just read this. Because if anything I owe you something and if you still care about loose ends as I remember you to, then you’ll want this. All these written pages mean nothing if they’re not read by you.   
Its selfish for me to write this now, after almost five years of nothing and expect you to read this. I know that.   
Do you remember when we first met? 

I hadn’t thought about that for years until I began writing this, well, my first draft of this anyway.   
I was an arrogant seventeen-year-old and you were this tall, dark, handsome stranger in your cowboy duster. I still recall the moment I laid eyes on you and I thought, wow, this man is going to break my heart someday, whether he’ll be aware of that or not was not something that was not up to me, but to fate herself.  
I was very lucky to have a mentor like you. 

St.Vladamir’s was the place I had attended the longest, with a mother in politics, you never know where you would end up. I had a childhood of moving from place to place, finding somewhere to fit in, because being a teenager isn’t already hard enough without having to be a new kid. There were a lot of people my age who were in a similar situation and I think that’s how I bonded with a lot of the people there who soon became my friends.   
I hated my mother when she told me that she got a job at the embassy. I thought Janine was selfish for dragging my sorry ass across the world. Of course, now I know that moving to Russia, to Baia, would change my life. 

You would always get so annoyed at me when you taught me, I never picked up Russian very well looking back at it, I purposely did a bad job just so I could spend more time with you. I don’t know what my tactic was, piss off my Russian tutor and make him want to be around me by butchering his language? Can’t really say it was my best plan, but it was puppy love. 

I thought for a long time that I loved you more than you loved me, maybe that was true at the beginning.   
I always wondered when you fell in love with me. You were so hard to read back then. You were always so serious, so stoic. I would always call your poker face your ‘guardian mask’ because you had that trained so well. I’m happy that I was one of the only people who could break that mask and reveal your true emotions.   
Our love was something else, wasn’t it? Scandalous. Lots of people didn’t want us to be together. You almost lost your job over the whole thing. It didn’t matter that I turned eighteen by the time we had revealed our relationship, it simply came down to you what was what. You were twenty-five at that point and my mentor.   
You know, I never realised how weird our age gap was until I turned twenty-five myself, I don’t think I could fall in love someone that much younger than me. I’m nowhere suggesting you dated me just for my age, but you could have fought harder to keep me away until I had left St.Vladamir’s. Until I had some life experience outside of the confines of schools. I didn’t even want to go to university at the time because all I wanted was to stay in Russia and be with you. 

My mother never forgave me for that. Always accused me of throwing my life away for a man I didn’t even know properly. That wasn’t true, I did know you. For those four years that we were together, I was the person who knew you the most. And you knew me the most. 

You were the only one who could tell I was faking a smile. 

I went to a lot of fancy parties with my now husband, back when we first met. We came to a sort of agreement I guess you could call it. He needed a pretty girl on his arm at his events and I needed connections in the world, rich people connections. I had a goal, and I would have done anything to achieve it. 

It started off as an occasional thing, I met him through Lissa’s job when I tagged along to one of her work events and met him. Do you remember Lissa? She was my best friend at St. Vladamir’s and she grew up to be one of the most successful lawyers in New York. Anyway, she introduced the two of us and we talked for most of the evening. He was fun, young, the life of the party type of person, had an addicting personality. I spent a good portion of our conversation chatting the most absolute crap about the company and how they underpay their employees and expect the most while paying them the least.   
Turns out, he was the boss’s son. Oops. 

We bumped into each other a few times after that and he agreed to help me as long as I helped him. It started from work events, making boring conversation to boring people with lots of money lining their pockets, to wingman-ing him at clubs, trying to find him a new pretty girl he could take home that night. He made me feel young, made up for the years I lost. He always said he was interested in me, but I could never be the kind of girl he deserved to love. So, he backed off and became the best person in my life instead. 

All I did disappoint people in those years. I’m glad I kept him at arm’s length.

Adrian was my best friend. Simple as that. We were simple, there was nothing complicated between us. Falling in love with him came slowly and I was so aware of it happening, it was like walking into love with him, like waking up to the goldenness of daylight. 

It was so different than falling in love with you, that was breath-taking. Like discovering gravity while falling down a bottomless pit. It was exhilarating.   
I told him all about you. One day, we were both quite tipsy from a little too much champagne and lying in the middle of an empty field watching the stars at night, you can barely see the stars in the city, so I always took advantage of seeing them whenever I could. 

And under those stars, I told him about the greatest love I experienced. The love that was so strong and the love that we fought for. The love that made me want to follow you to the end of the earth.

I told him about our first date, that we had in secret, when we went out into the old greenhouse on the outskirts of school ground past curfew and you brought a picnic basket filled with all my favourite snacks and how nervous I was that I almost threw up before meeting with you or annoyed Lissa by changing my outfit five times. I told him how safe I felt, for the first time in my life, when you were holding my hand. And how your lips felt against mine at the end of the date, the small brush of lips, and the hesitant press against my own. The perfect first kiss. 

I spoke about our first time too, when I snuck out to town and met you at the motel, I bounced on the bed as soon as I got into the room and you kept telling me off saying someone would come tell us off. And you were right. I mentioned how I very nearly cried afterwards and how you held me close, like I was the most precious thing you’ve ever held. 

Adrian called you a cradle-robber. I didn’t like that. It cheapened what we had. 

I told him the rest of our story. The anger that ensued after my mother found out, the way I threw things at the walls in her office, how she was threating to call the police on you, and I was sobbing and begging her to let me do something that I wanted to for once. I told him how your mother took me in after I finished school, after mine cut me off.

For a long, long time I wished your mother were the one who raised me. To me she was the perfect mother. I wished for a loving household and mom to come home to every night. Someone who would make dinner and give you forehead kisses and make you hot milk when you couldn’t sleep. She made me feel like I was apart of your family. And that was something I craved.

The rest of our story becomes a little mundane after that, we fell into a routine, like all couples eventually do, I guess. I was working at that awful ice-skating rink, making pennies, and you went to the community college and was working to get your teaching degree. You always loved to teach. I told him about the nights where you would practise your classes in front of me and your sisters, how I would kiss you when you finished because I was so proud of you and how hard you worked.   
Those memories are some of my favourites.

It might come from having a high achieving mother, but I wanted more from life than I was getting. I had no funds to get me through college and didn’t do so great by the end of high school, I didn’t know what I was good at back then. I didn’t know what I wanted to achieve.  
When I was most insecure about it, I would cling to you more, because if I didn’t have what I wanted from the world, at least I had you. At least I had us.  
I wish that you could have seen me struggling. 

I was drowning and I needed someone to hold out their hand and pull me out. You were supposed to be that person. Every time someone talked about us settling down, talking about getting a house when you finally landed a teaching job, or the premise of being a mother.   
I could never be a parent. 

I felt like I was suffocating. Like the feeling of hanging from the edge of the cliff the whole time, in constant fear and using all the energy I had to keep holding on, when everyone else around me could manage it just fine. 

You were lucky, you still had your friends around, to talk to outside of your family. I didn’t. I had the odd friend or two at work or friends from school who were off at colleges at that point, it was just never the same. Every time I brought up the concept of not wanting marriage or kids to your family, I got shut down very quickly. And they built it in your head that having all of those things would fix me and my mood. I started to lost control.  
I wish you would have just asked me. 

You proposing to me was the biggest eye opener I had. For the first time in a long time, I had a clear choice. I could see it mapped out in my head, the two paths I could take, one was so much scarier than the safe, comfortable one I could have had with you. And I jumped headfirst for the unknown path, the one where I would rather be alone than make us both miserable in a marriage. 

I hoped one day you would have thanked me for making the hard choice.

I think at the time you thought it meant I no longer loved you, I could see it in your face when I shook my head. But I didn’t, I always loved you. But for once, I chose myself. 

You didn’t know what to say, you just stared at me, blinked a few times, as if it was a bad dream that you were waking up from. I remember holding your face and kissing your cheek. I didn’t know what to say. 

I never ran so fast and I left you kneeling on that bridge by yourself and went home, your home. Where your whole family was waiting to celebrate our engagement. But all they got was a let-down. 

Your mother’s face broke me the most. And at that point I knew, even though she treated me like a daughter since she took me in, I would now be the person who broke her only son’s heart, I was no longer a part of the family that I desperately clung on to in replacement of mine. I always wondered what people said about me after. Does your family still hate me now? 

So, I packed. All my stuff. And bought myself a plane ticket to the first place I could think of: London, England. I hope you’re not rolling your eyes at me right now, I dreamed of that city life for a long time, the anonymity of the people, never growing bored of the same three stores in town, endless college opportunities. To me, it was freedom. 

I remember when you walked up the stairs and saw me packing. You knew then, you understood that this is what I needed to do. And you just stood there watching me pack everything, to the last pair of socks and you said nothing. I saw that mask of yours begin to grow again. 

I don’t know if I wanted you to fight for me or not. I still don’t. Maybe that would have been the moment you would have tried harder to give me a life that we both could have loved. You knew I wanted to travel and see the world; we could have done that together. But maybe, I would have just stayed where I was because I didn’t want to do something that you didn’t. 

Maybe I had our whole relationship built up in my head. There was so much against us; my mother, the school, your need to prove yourself to everyone, my trust issues. Perhaps instead of this great forbidden love story, we were two damaged people finding someone in the world who could understand us.   
I still remember the day you told me about your father, the fight that we got into before that, how I accused you of not opening up to me, cried at you that you never gave as much as I gave you. I think of how you held me in your arms as I sobbed my heart out and you told me the story of how your mother was abused. How you watched it all happen from the side-lines, the helplessness you felt for her, and how sometimes he would hit you too. I recall the hitch in your voice when you told me the day you decided to hit back. The day you became strong and the man of the house. 

I’m sorry that your childhood got robbed, Dimitri. You didn’t need to be strong, you needed to be safe.

After I moved to London, I kept seeing your face everywhere after I left. It was weird because I didn’t know if I were trying to look for you or if I were worried that I would get caught back into a life I was escaping from. 

Not long after getting a basic office job and starting to settle down, I reconnected with my mother. It was tough and she made me work for our relationship back. I said so many awful things to her back then and at the end of the day, she was right. I gave up so much for you and I regretted that. I regret the spite I felt for you, it wasn’t your fault that I was too stubborn to not put myself first. I thought I knew what I wanted. 

I did receive your voicemails and emails. I would have replied if I knew what to say. 

My mother and I worked through all or differences, she got me an internship through her many connections and helped me get back to my feet. I know it was not the motherly love that I had wanted in my youth, it had grown now, now I wanted to make a life I was proud of, and I looked to the most successful woman in my life for that. It’s her way of showing love too, her pushing me to become the best version of myself I could be, don’t get me wrong though, I do know when to push back, I wouldn’t let her control my life. 

I already had enough of that feeling for a lifetime. 

I’m happy to hear that you found someone else in your life, that she had the same ideals that you did and gave you children that I never could. Viktoria kept in touch with me for a while, Natasha, right? I hope she loves you with all her heart, you deserve nothing less.

And I hope you became the father you always needed.

After years of thought, I realised that children will be something that I will never want. Adrian doesn’t want any either, he has enough siblings in his life to give him the nieces and nephews to fulfil that in his life, and I have him, which is enough for me.

It was a difficult decision to come to, it feels against ideals to not want children. At the time I had realised this I didn’t even want to be in a relationship, let alone have a human to forever connect me to a person. I'm sorry I was so scared of commitment, I know that now, I was so young, and you asked for so much Dimitri. I really did want to be the one to give you that life, to settle down and give you someone to come home to and raise little rascals. 

Now we know, I could have never been the one.

I know once the last page turns you will go off to live your life, a life without me in it. But now I hope you know that I didn’t mean to hurt you, just as you didn’t mean to hurt me. It was just the wrong time.

I wish you a wonderful life, Dimitri Belikov. 

You will always be my first love.

Love always,

Rosemarie Hathaway Ivashkov.


End file.
